stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

402 STRIPPING THE GURUS
himself to be slowly cooked, rather than simply jumping out of the
water to safety.
A comparable “slow descent,” invisible to those who participate
in it step-by-step on a daily basis, occurs in our world’s ashrams.
Indeed, even new members in an already “mad” environment
will have that introduction cushioned by having the most questionable
aspects of the organization hidden from them until they
have demonstrated their loyalty. To find out, first-hand, how bad
things really are, then, one must already be “halfway cooked” oneself,
via that slow increase in heat.
Consider, further, Stanley Milgram’s (1974) obedience experiments.
There, a majority (nearly two-thirds, in one experimental
version) of ordinary people were induced, in less than an hour,
to administer what they thought were potentially lethal shocks to
even hysterically protesting others, simply out of their obedience to
the minimal authority of an experimenter.
The most significant aspect of [Milgram’s] experiment is that
not one participant refuses to continue when the planted
subject first asks them to stop. It is only later, with a threat
of death or grave illness, that people refuse to go on with the
shocks. It is always and only the scream that is heeded, and
never its antecedent, never the beginnings or first hints of
pain [i.e., never the first sensings of the “slow, continual increase
in heat”]....
One sees the same thing at work in [so-called] cults: a
refusal to recognize in early excesses, early signs, the full
implications of what is going on and will follow later. Relinquishing
step by step the individualities of conscience, followers
are slowly accustomed to one stage of [reported] abuse
after another, becoming so respectful of the authority that
they never quite manage to rebel (Marin, 1995).
Both of those frightening experimental demonstrations (of
Zimbardo and Milgram) arise simply from basic human situational
psychology, present as much outside our world’s ashrams as inside
them.
One could, indeed, substitute respect-hungering inner-circle
monks for guards, gurus for superintendents, and younger monks
for prisoners, repeating Zimbardo’s study in any of our world’s ashrams,
and the results of the experiment would surely not change at
all. Likewise, one might substitute elder monks for dial-turning